Thailand forum

hi have been lurking around the site for a while and have always found it informative, so hoping for some input here. i live in bangkok and am thinking that instead of spending all my cash at siam every weekend, i should explore the islands a bit. ideally i'd leave on friday morning (even though sometimes i can only leave at night) and need to be back monday morning. any idea on which islands would be a good place for me to go alone?

i don't really want to party, but i don't mind beach bars. would love to learn how to dive too.

The best spot for short weekenders from Bangkok is Ko Samet -- I'd start with that and then try further afield. The Ko Chang group aren't too bad, but just going for a weekend is rushed. Further afield you can always fly south to Samui of Krabi, but again for a weekend is tight.

For a weekend only you could also go to Pattaya. Pattaya is only around 125 baht by bus from Ekamai. They have diving instruction, Google up "diving in Pattaya" and you will get some hits like this one.
http://www.mermaiddive.com/

Pattaya might be the cheapest place you can get to quickly. You could stay in the Jomtien area and never venture into Pattya City area. But, if you want an island, from the Walking Street area of Pattaya, find the Bali Hai Pier - at that pier you can take the cheap 20 baht ferry to Koh Larn Island. http://www.kohlarn.com/

Hotels are cheaper in Pattaya than Bangkok. Transportation is only 10 baht by baht bus. If you don't care for the weekend excursion you are only out a few baht for the bus ride and you can scratch this city off your map for future trips. There's lots of weekends to experiment with.

I'd agree that Samet is the obvious start - followed by the Chang island group over near Trat. I also agree that Pattaya is not such a good idea.
Islands further afield are okay if you can afford to fly. You can reach a lot of the Andaman islands thru Phuket, Krabi or Trang (I don't think the flights to Ranong for Ko Phayam and little Ko Chang Andaman side coincide with weekends - check Air Asia). And you can fly onto Samui for the southern Gulf islands - note that the weather tends to be a fair bit wetter there between now and late Dec, early Jan.
Overnight train trips will get you to Trang for a whole bunch of nice islands and to Surathani for Samui etc - I'm not sure of the return trips' timing: whether you can get an overnight sleeper back to Bangkok. But you can get overnight bus trips to/from all the southern areas - mind you my bus from Ranong got into Phuket at 4am which means you are going to be yawning a lot at work on Monday.
A good site to check for overnight bus/fast Catamaran trips to Tao/Phangan/Samui is Lomprayah - this outfit is often praised and seems not to be dodgy like a lot of the non-government-bus operations out of Bangkok. Tao and Phangan are great starter islands out of their wet season.

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